Making the Grade?

Grading the President at 100 days is an exercise created by the media, intended to drum up interest in their 24 hour news programs.  Not only is it entirely impractical, but I would argue it does a lot of damage to our ability to work together on bipartisan terms.  I was listening to this subject being debated by Rosen and Sirota on the way to work today, and it didn't take long for the conversation to descend into political blaming rather than actually looking for solutions to problems.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Once you start looking to assign blame to one politician or the other, or to one party or the other, you're no longer looking for solutions, you're looking to cover your own behind.  Once someone starts saying, "Well, it was actually Clinton who started that" or "Reagan greatly increased the debt before Obama did", constructive conversation has essentially ended.  

Rather than handing out grades, I would like to make a suggestion to both parties at this point:

Democrats need to stop blindly supporting the President's every move, and Republicans need to stop jumping on every little misstep he makes.  

Our current reality is that a man was elected who promised unrealistic levels of domestic spending.  During the election he promised so many new programs, Republicans cried that it was impossible to fulfill them all, which proves Barack Obama was just a normal run-of-the-mill politician making promises he couldn't keep.  Well, with a look at the President's stimulus and budget it appears that he was entirely genuine in the promises he made, whatever the cost.  But where are the moderate Democrats?  Just because you have a 'D' behind your name doesn't mean you have to agree with everything the President does, and our political system needs to have that type of honesty in it.  Certainly there are some Democrats who don't agree with everything Obama is doing?  Just as there are socially liberal Republicans, there are fiscally conservative Democrats, and they have remained completely silent during the first 100 days of President Obama's term.

Republicans need to get over the fact that the new Administration is composed of neophytes who are going to make their mistakes.  The fact that his team of advisers do some mind numbingly stupid things should surprise no one.  As long as those mistakes stay generally minor, there is no reason to constantly berate the man for them.  The gift to the Prime Minister of Britain (20 DVDs, encoded for the U.S.), a typo on a red button given to the Russians, Obama's reliance on teleprompters, Obama's weak reaction at being used for propaganda by Hugo Chavez, are all rather amusing missteps.  But Republicans risk being viewed as shrill bellyachers when they complain about everything, the type of people they so despised during the Bush Administration.  That degraded position makes it difficult to be viewed objectively when complaining about legitimate concerns, such as the budget, deficit, or even the recent fly-by in New York by Air Force One.  

100 days does present a good opportunity to take a step back and evaluate how things are going overall.  We can all benefit from deconstructing our past actions.  But just as I prefer my professors to withhold giving me a grade 10 days into the semester, I prefer to withhold giving a new administration a grade this early into things.  Grades come at the end of the term for a reason.